Breaking down the bloodline

Friends, I have uncovered some fresh new trauma to my family line that I never knew existed before. It is so awful that I will not share what it is, but know that I have been rocked to my core, flattened, and more than a little in shock.

I ask Aphrodite for clarity, She gives me Her hand.

The way the information was dropped on me was casual, unexpected, and totally unnecessary for me to know, yet now I am so burdened, and it is one more layer I must deal with. There are magickal things that can be done to help lessen the stain, and I will be engaging in them when I have the right materials on hand. For now, it's scalding showers and smoke cleansing with rosemary, which is sacred to Aphrodite.

Because I desperately need to be wrapped in sacred space.

This one will by necessity be short, and I apologize for that, as I have little to say... because when you learn something so devastating and life-defining, you are often left with few words. In truth, I feel like making Moo Deng face at it.

Like so. Because there is nothing else to say.

I'm not okay, and will not be okay for some time. But Aphrodite is with me, and I am safe in all respects.

So I asked Her a general question for us all, where can we find healing in these difficult corners?

So this is a card that comes up a lot for me in my private practice and I get what She is trying to say here. She is saying that the only way to get past or through or around something this big, this terrifying and disgusting, is to nurture the inner child at all their stages of development. That means the inner five year old and the inner tween, the inner sixteen year old, the precocious preteen. All of these facets of us deserve to be nourished, lifted up, protected. All of them deserve a staunch defender.

Can you even imagine what it must be like, to have had a defender in youth? To stand up and say, "No. This will not happen."

Well, we can do it for ourselves, now that we're older, now that we are grown. This card is a gateway, a portal, an allowance, a wormhole to the past. We can use memory to heal ourselves. Earlier today I experienced some little healing through music, which through the power of time magick connected me to a time where I was happy, safe, and cared for. It was soothing to sit there, listening, remembering. If we look back and take these honeyed moments and spread them out over the wretched holes in the coverage, we might feel some comfort from the thinner, but more complete cloak of warm golden memory around our shoulders.

Aphrodite guides us to a soft expansive acceptance of ourselves, warm in the waters of the middle sea. There we are reborn as creatures of love, with all that entails. We come to know that it can hurt us. We do it anyway. My memories are littered with fragments of past loves. Even the child you were in your twenties needs affection, care, attention, protection. I don't think we ever grow up. I think we just evolve along. Don't you want to give your sad thirty-seven year old self a hug, telling them it will be all right someday?

Float willingly in Her sea of connections gleaming bright and sweet. She will deliver pain and pleasure in equal measure and expects that we know how to move through it with grace and endurance. What happens to the one whose pool of endurance has nearly dried up? What happens when they are a weak insect straggling along on five legs? Worshipping Aphrodite is not easy but it is worthwhile, every time.

Let the inner self lead, no matter the age that needs attention. It may be a triage situation at first. There may be many voices clamoring to be noticed, many iterations of you who were harmed and deserve their say. For one reason or another, we didn't give that space to them in time. We owe them forgiveness. Maybe there wasn't time, in the past. Maybe there wasn't time to mourn, or money for college tests and applications or clothes, or time to really heal after that painful breakup. We can forgive ourselves, too, in the process.

"I'm sorry I was not there for you when you needed someone. I am here now.

"I'm here now."

I love you all.

In Aphrodite's Name,

J